This presentation describes an ongoing teen dating violence prevention program to diminish the occurrence of physical, psychological and sexual violence, and increase social problem-solving skills. Method: A low-income... [ view full abstract ]
This presentation describes an ongoing teen dating violence prevention program to diminish the occurrence of physical, psychological and sexual violence, and increase social problem-solving skills.
Method: A low-income neighborhood school in São Paulo took part of the study, with 82 adolescents (45 females, 37 males) randomly selected as Control (23) or Experimental (59) groups (mean age 15.9 years). Participants answered demographic questions, the Conflicts Tactics Scale – Revised (CTS-2), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), a Questionnaire on Beliefs about Violence, and an evaluation of the intervention, which involved 10 50 minute sessions conducted by a male and a female psychologist.
Preliminary Results: In the Experimental group, 32.2% of students were involved in romantic relationships in pretest; 30.5% in the posttest, while for Controls those percentages were 69.5%; 30.4% respectively. CTS-2 results showed stability for the Control group with same rates on pre and posttest for violent dating authorship behaviors (78.9%) and victimization (68.4%), while in the Experimental group those rates decreased from 88.8% to 71.4% regarding authorship of violent behaviors, and from 88.8% to 82.1% for victimization. AUDIT results showed decreases for the Experimental group on alcohol consumption (from 42,3 to 35,3) and binge drinking (32% to 30%) in the last 30 days, while Controls had , slight increases for alcohol use (from 58,3% to 60,8% ), and binge (35,7% to 42,8%). On the Beliefs about Violence Questionnaire, males (27.2–26.4) and females (30.8–30.6) from Controls presented stability on the frequency of adequate answers, whereas the Experimental group presented a slight increase (males 28.2-29.6; females 30.7–32.1). Participants evaluated the program with an average score of 4.7 out of 5.
Conclusions: Preliminary results are encouraging and statistical tests will be conducted to verify the program´s effect. Limitations and future contributions will be discussed.
